Finding a home to buy
Often when I write blogs, I have the idea clearly in my head and the basic format all laid out in my mind. Not this time. But that’s the great thing about a keyboard, right? You can get nowhere a lot faster than when you are writing by hand!
We are really frustrated right now. We’ve been in Maryland for barely a week but it feels like a month. What I thought would be just looking at a few places and picking the one that we want to buy has turned into wondering whether or not we can actually afford to buy. The market here is crazy. It may be as bad as San Diego. It’s just ridiculous. By way of example, a townhouse in the neighborhood where we sold for $390K three years ago just came on the market at $420K. I know that doesn’t mean it will sell for that much, but it’s pretty indicative of the market around here.
Admittedly, we are trying to figure out WHY, exactly, we are so frustrated after only one week. First, we’re staying in a hotel. When we’ve moved in the past, we’ve always stayed with someone that we knew. That was worth more than I think we realized at the time. First, we were just banking money. We always offered some money to our hosts for utility bills and food, but they rarely took it. So we were banking money. We also were under no real pressure to find a place in a hurry. The hotel has changed everything. As long as we’re here (Candlewood Suites) we’re spending about $3000 per month. So that has added urgency to our search.
The second frustration is with the cost of real estate in this area. You guys may not have had BRAC (Base Realignment And Closure) on your radars, but Fort Meade is one of the bases that has taken on additional agencies and facilities as OTHER bases have closed. Add to it that Fort Meade is a national defense hub anyway (NSA, DISA, EPA, DMA, DIS to name a few) and this base is CRAZY compared to what it was when I first came here in 1995. I know - it’s amazing how things change in 20 years! There are new buildings going up everywhere on the base. I know that this will make you guys feel SO sorry for us poor military folks, but they used to have TWO 18-hole golf courses on the base, but they don't exist anymore. They needed the room to build, so what used to be fairways and greens are now littered with buildings. Bottom line: demand for housing in this area is on a steep rise, and the market prices reflect that. There’s just no such thing as a “steal” around here when you are looking to buy real estate.
The real rub is that Jennifer and I know exactly what we want, where we want it, and what we want to pay for it. It just doesn’t match reality in the areas that we want to be. So we are coming to the painful realization that we need to give up something, and it’s hard to figure out what that something is. I would like to be close, because I hate driving. There are certain areas that are nicer than others. We’d like walking trails. We’d like a two-car garage. The list goes on and on.
Some interesting things:
When I look online, the places that jump out as being perfect - not too big, two-car garage, nice community facilities, priced right - they turn out to be 55+ communities! I’m thinking about getting a fake ID card that says I’m 55 just so we can live in one of them. They are perfect for us! Builders, especially of townhouses and condos, only think to maximize living space, so they generally don’t build two-car garages, and sometimes they don’t even build a one-car garage. But for 55+ communities here in Maryland, they assume that since you’re older you want to park in the garage (and not dig your car out of the snow) and that you don’t need 3000 square feet of living space. But for everyone else, the assumption is that you’d rather have an extra bedroom than a garage. Why is that? If you want something smallish (say, 1500 square feet) then you might as well forget a garage. They don’t exist. Even small single family homes of the same size will not have a garage. Do you have to have a family of six to want to park in a garage??
Association fees don’t make any sense to me. We looked in a new townhouse/condo community yesterday. If you get a full townhouse (four floors, 2800 square feet) your association fee is $107 per month. If you get a condo (two floors, 1800 square feet) the association fee is $270 per month. Huh? So you get two paying members of the same association fee in the same space, but you charge each one more than double?? That makes no sense to me. The seller tried to explain that since it’s a condo it includes renters insurance, but if you’re in the townhouse, you have to get your own insurance. I’m no expert on renter’s insurance, but is that really worth $160 per month?
An 1800 square foot townhouse with no garage in a so-so area will cost $380K. A 2600 square foot townhouse with a garage in a nice area starts around $460K. I’m not trying to trivialize $80K, I’m really not. But when you look at lending, that’s about an additional $350 a month at the current rates. There is a LOT of the low stuff available. However, if you go to that price point you hope you find a parking spot in the lot and then walk 200-feet to the house that you own. When you get into it, there is NO STORAGE. The assumption is that if you’re buying at that price point, you don’t have a work bench, bicycles, boxes of Christmas decorations, or sporting equipment. There is no storage. None. The kitchen is usually the size of a galley kitchen on an 18-foot yacht, and rather than two decent sized bedrooms, for example, there are three or even four tiny bedrooms that are barely large enough for a twin bed and a dresser.
But there is not much in between. There is nothing at $400K. Not much at $420K. You have to go up to $450 and more like $460 if you want storage, a garage, a master bedroom suite with his and hers sinks, etc. And that’s a townhouse. If you want a house at that price point it’s going to be small. Maybe a one-car garage, maybe just a car port. It’s old, with small bedrooms, and probably needs the 1970’s pink tile in the bathroom replaced, along with the prototype whirlpool dishwasher and the wood paneling on the walls. So then you think, “I got a house for $450K” and then spend another $60K to update it. So you might as well look at a half million.
So frustrating!
So what would you give up? In real estate they say location is everything right? Because you can’t ever change that. How about a garage? If we give that up then we definitely need to use a whole room just for storage. Maybe we should live in Pennsylvania like a lot of people do these days and just drive an hour each way to work. Then we can have everything that we want. Do we buy a dump and spend our waking moments working on the place to update it?
I’m just trying to figure out what I need to let go. I think Jen filters everything through the “Marc hates driving” lens. It’s true, I do hate it. But I feel like it’s restricting things too much. I loved our old neighborhood because it was a good starting point for bike riding, both mountain and road. But I probably need to give that up. I can load my bike for a car ride to the start point like most of the rest of the world. I have a garage full of tools that I use RARELY. Maybe it’s time to get rid of that stuff so that storage space isn’t as much of an issue. I don’t know.
In the end, it’s just really frustrating. We keep telling ourselves it’s only been a week, but in reality we’ve been living out of suitcases since the end of January. I never thought I would get tired of figuring out where to go out to eat, but I am. Whatever we find, it will probably be at least a 45-day escrow. I hope that soon we’ll be in a house and look back and laugh about how stressed we were, but it’s a bit consuming at the moment. We've considered renting for awhile just to take the pressure off, but in reality, with all that is going on at Fort Meade, the market isn't going to get any better anytime soon. Something’s gotta give.
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